The French government had planned to send 93 Gypsies, or Roma, back to Romania on Thursday, but at least 18 didn't turn up for their flights, officials said.

The expulsions come amid French concerns over how to deal with mobile populations in the expanded version of the European Union. Over the past decade, Central and East European countries including Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, whose populations are generally poorer than West Europeans, have joined the EU. Most of Europe's estimated 11 million Gypsies live in the east. The EU guarantees freedom of movement to citizens of member states, but only on condition that they can support themselves.

French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux said the problem was illegal camps. "We are enforcing simple rules," he said. "One cannot just illegally occupy land without authorization."

The returns on Thursday were part of a "voluntary" repatriation program, in which each adult is granted €300 (about $390) and each minor €100 for returning to his or her country of origin. Those who stay too long in France and who don't choose to return under the program voluntarily will later receive an order from the government to leave the country anyway, though such orders are sometimes difficult to enforce.

France has been expelling foreign Gypsies for the past few years—an estimated 12,000 were deported in 2009, according to Alexandre Le Clève, a spokesman for advocacy group Rom Europe. There have been 25 rounds of expulsions already this year, according to the Interior Ministry, which didn't give the total number of people involved.

insofar as I understand the situation, what with the protests, anti-roma violence, expulsions from various assorted sundry european states including the big one in italy, roma are so hated over there that it isn't even funny, and a kid who grows up roma will have to deal with poverty, low life expectancy, and a phenomenal amount of cultural prejudice.

However, on the other hand, the Roma don't help themselves any, either. Theirs is a sociopathic and entrapping culture that is rife with violence, drug use, child abuse, and children are trained essentially to not regard outsiders as anything but easy marks.

Even the most tolerant people I know say that they absolutely, absolutely do not trust roma and that the camps are terrible things that they really do want as far away from them as possible. Most people encounter roma as grifters and swindlers who 'come by' to help you put your bags in your car outside the supermarket, and children are enlisted and given costumes to constantly and aggressively panhandle alongside their parents.

oddly enough there are some striking parallels between the 'entrapping culture' paradigm of both the Roma and the Hadesic jewish populations (and, to a lesser extent, the Mormons), but the similarities tend to end there. Whatever the various PotEoZ-wielding antisemites tend to say, I don't think even the most alien and entrapping ultra-orthodox communities beat their kids and train them to be grifters and swindlers.

this is a really weird subject for me because I play in a faux-gypsy band, and there has been a massive resurgence of gypsy style music in Australia over the last ten years, especially up and down the est coast with a whole bunch of bands adopting a 'gypsy' aesthetic and musical style.

a close friend of mine is the only legitimate one of us, her family being Roma who settled in Hungary, even though she has been in Australia since she was very young. She has just recently returned and had an amazing time playing music in tiny villages, and witnessing a lot of hardship and poverty.

It's a difficult thing because there are such split views of Roma life, they're either fun loving music loving scamps out of a Tony Gatliff film, as Sarah has experianced, or scamming, child abusing criminals. My parents were over in Europe last year and the witnessed Roma of all ages begging in the streets by lying across the street on their faces, and charging people imaginary entry fees into churches.

I guess more than anything it is something perpetuated by both sides, young non-Roma are raised to see the Roma as criminals and young Roma are raised to see everyone else as persecutors and exploiters who get what they deserve.

Like so many situations like this it feels like a byproduct of Old Men who are set in their ways training their children to stay set in those ways, with neither side trying to do anything actively positive...

I guess you cannot make a statement about Roma that encompasses all Roma, just like you can't make a statement about Gadjo that encompasses all Gadjo._________________Once, at a local NOW meeting where I was the only male among about a dozen women, a feminism trivia contest was held. I came in third.

It's a difficult thing because there are such split views of Roma life, they're either fun loving music loving scamps out of a Tony Gatliff film, as Sarah has experianced, or scamming, child abusing criminals. My parents were over in Europe last year and the witnessed Roma of all ages begging in the streets by lying across the street on their faces, and charging people imaginary entry fees into churches.

What I would bet is that it's impossible that all the roma camps are as bad as they are in, say, north italy, but the image they propagate at their worst is what is livid and what sticks. You remember the scammers much easier.

There is a French expression that fits the bill here : "Drowning the fish"

The whole, unsavory, line of event is all internal politics.

Necessary background; it's pretty involved, then again we're talking about France and politics so bear with me.

June-early July

The current government is not very popular. Due to many reasons, budget and spending have to get cut like in many countries, with mostly social programs being axed. The main course will be a change of retirement plans, this will be discussed tomorrow in parliament. While said changes are expected and more or less accepted, unions will not let this one go without a fight.

Earlier this year.

Regional elections were a huge shock for the conservative govt. Not only they lost almost all seats but more importantly there was an unexpected surge of far-right voters. These inbred just swear by removing immigrants, getting rid of muslims (they're closet antisemitics too).

Last but not least.

The current French pres. is a former interior minister and made various tough speeches on crime prevention (I wasn't back until last year so data is a bit sketchy). Despite all the rethoric, mugging like violence rose by an unhealthy (politically) 10-13% since he came to power. Usually, in France, conservatives are elected on security and financial management, social-democrats on welfare. The pres. made some unwise choices early during his mandate that sunk all possible financial options when subrpimes exploded to the face of everyone. And there are elections due in 2012. Until last Fall, it was a given he would be the frontrunner for the conservatives. Now...

This is the background.

Current line of events :

There were cases of corruption and nepotism late Winter, quite typical here. A new corruption case "exploded" in late July involving the minister in charge of retirement reforms, if you followed up so far that's chatper one. Investigation are still underway on the matter.

Since it was the onstart of holiday season, that minister was stonewalled by his colleagues and the charges dismissed as political ploy and media harassment; relations between the pres. and press (the one that doesn't kow-tow) is notoriously bad. But as events unfolded, that line of defence looked a bit dubious. So instead of giving the guy the pinkslip and letting summer-time pass by, the president made an inflamatory speech to draw attention on crime and immigrants.

The purpose is manyfold.

-1 First of, as said above, the smokescreen factor. While medias talks about expulsions, they don't talk about other things...

That blew up as new revelations further stains the involved minister. "Drowning the fish" didn't work.

-2 Politically to draw back voters from the far right party (Front National) and embarass the soc-dem whose security politics are lacking. The idea was to draw the latter into an open feud and point out their failings.

That one blew up too. Soc-dem didn't want to touch the matter early on with a standard issue 10' pole, Front-National pointed out that the govt. just used policies they were advocating for ages. [edit]They also add that since Roma are EU members anyway, nobody would prevent them from coming back in a month or so; the point being, even if the govt. is copying their policy they're still way ahead in term of politics. Their goal is to keep on their voters instead of seeing them move back to more maintstream parties by going yet another inch further [/edit]

Red lines were crossed when politicians started to use the race card to justify expulsions. At first it was foreign press, that could be dismissed. But when the Vatican, and generally the church, voiced their disapproval publicly that made some noise; most of the conservative's core voters are rural catholics. Bad move...French political system is two steps as far as presidential elections are concerned with the frontrunners facing one another on the secound round. The worst case scenario for conservatives would be to see Front-Nat to get ahead of them in the first round (as in a reverse 2002 election) and face soc-dem on the second. [edit] So if they can't win back those voters while still loosing their base, they'll start worying for good. [/edit]

As to where this will go?.

I expect this to deflate in a month or so or the probable cost will be too dear for the current govt; Brussel (EU) is showing teeth already. Also, as said above, the govt cannot afford to distanciate itself too much from it's core voter base chasing after far right voters.

tl;dr version :

Big fuckup that blew to the face of French govt. Serve 'em right._________________Meu aerobarca esta cheoi de enguias

Last edited by Sam the Eagle on Mon Sep 06, 2010 12:38 pm; edited 3 times in total

That's pretty interesting Sam the Eagle. Doesn't surprise me one bit. Sarkozy is the scum of the earth.

Other Sam: Although I'm not too familiar with the situation in Eastern Europe, I'd say that with the exception of Italy (and fuck Italy), most countries don't care too much about Roma's. There's the old fashioned suspicion, but no calls to kick out the gypsies or anything like that.

After all, the real enemies are the MUSLIMS DAMN THEIR EYES_________________attitude of a street punk, only cutting selected words out of context to get onself excuse to let one's dirty mouth loose

oddly enough there are some striking parallels between the 'entrapping culture' paradigm of both the Roma and the Hadesic jewish populations (and, to a lesser extent, the Mormons), but the similarities tend to end there. Whatever the various PotEoZ-wielding antisemites tend to say, I don't think even the most alien and entrapping ultra-orthodox communities beat their kids and train them to be grifters and swindlers.

There are even closer similarities with Sephardic Jews. In fact, the Sephardi and the Roma invented flamenco together. It's true; look it up._________________Scire aliquid laus est, pudor est non discere velle
"It is laudable to know something, it is disgraceful to not want to learn"
~Seneca

1) People need to be gathered, planes to be chartered, etc etc. Plus a 300€ "voluntary return aid" per head. Evicting illegal immigrants costs maybe more than just trying to integrate them to the society. But so many people can't stand that. Fools.

2) The Roma are Romanian or Bulgarian citizens. They have the right as every citizen of the European community to move freely on the EU territory. A soon as they land at Bucharest or Sofia they just... come back. Nothing can prevent that. They are so discriminated in those countries, hated by a majority and living in ghettos as pre-war Jews, they often even prefer begging in France.

3) Seriously, how could all that have any effect on the criminality in France ?

4) It's all about linking immigration and deliquency. Such politics can only have one result: increasing the racism.

And yet, given the immense hatred towards the roma throughout europe, it's being utilized as the easiest way possible to score easy political points. They might as well drop the pretense and start official state Kick a Roma days.

I wouldn't say 'immense hatred' against Roma is really all that fact appropriate. In fact, most people frown on the expulsions, at least here in Sweden they do. Fringe groups like the Sweden Democrats think it's a step in the right direction, but that's what they are: fringe. The current government also think immigration is a big issue but does not handle it well at all, which is why the issue has been brought up for the upcoming election.

Basically what you have in that article is Sarkozy being incompetent as usual and being French-first as per his nationalistic views. I wouldn't peg all of France xenophobic and nationalistic because its leader is.

Persecution of Romani does happen, yes. And it's really tragic and I hate reading about it in the news. Just recently Sweden deported fifty or so Romani from the capital for begging, which isn't a crime and isn't illegal. But do we harbor 'immense hatred' towards them, more importantly do most of us? Probably not.

Yeah, I think you're exaggerating a bit, Sam. I mean, Europe is a pretty racist place - though mostly towards Muslims - but it's not as bad as you seem to think._________________attitude of a street punk, only cutting selected words out of context to get onself excuse to let one's dirty mouth loose